Seed Saving
The summer heat is on its way out and the cooler days of autumn have finally arrived. Recently, a friend shared a story of how her husband came home from work with an air of triumph as he held out a pimply, shriveled red specimen: a single Carolina Reaper. The hottest pepper on the planet.
“What are you going to do with that?” my friend asked.
“Try it, of course! Make some hot sauce. Save the seeds and grow our own reaper plant!”
Her eyeroll did not deter him, nor did it affect her teen boys in the slightest. A gallon of milk and some belly laughs later, she found that he had gingerly scraped the seeds onto a paper towel and laid them to dry in the window.
“How soon can I put them into the garden?” he grinned.
When my friend explained he would have to wait until after winter, it was certainly a deflating pin prick to his excitement balloon. Womp womp.
While fall is full of so many fun festivities and seasonal flavors, sadly, ripe summer veggies are on their way out. However, this also makes it a great time to save the seeds from your favorite summer garden specimens so that you can *patiently* await warmer weather and begin the cycle again.
As an aside, autumn does not mean the end of an edible garden! It’s just the beginning for your culinary winter garden. See our autumn tips here.
If you’re ready to face up to the frost, here are some of our favorite seed saving tips:
Be sure that you’re not trying to save seeds from a hybrid variety plant as the offspring will not retain the traits of the parent plant. You want the good old-fashioned open pollinated variety.
Dry-fruited seeds (like beans) are ready to be removed from the plant as soon as they are dry and hard on the plant. They are ready to be stored in a cool, dry, and dark place.
Wet-fruited seeds (like peppers) must be harvested from mature flesh. Simply choose healthy and ripe specimens with the best flavor. Cut the flesh and remove the seeds for saving.
Some wet-fruited seeds (like tomatoes) require an additional step of fermentation to retrieve viable seeds free of their gel coating. Fermentation is not as complicated as it can seem, it simply means allowing the seeds to sit in their pulp and water in a clear container for a few days. Mold may form on top, and that’s ok. The good seeds will sink to the bottom and you can carefully pour off the pulp, then rinse and dry the seeds for storage.
Seeds are dry when they break instead of bend.
Once seeds are dried, they are ready to be stored in a cool, dry, and dark place. Think low temperature and low humidity. This could be a closet, a basement, or in a sealed jar in the refrigerator.
Be sure to label your seeds with the crop, variety, harvest date, and any other information you’d like to remember.
If done correctly, seeds can last in storage for a year or two, or even up to several years.
What seeds will you be saving from your summer garden?
In November we will talk about the importance of tool cleanup for next season along with our favorite tips for getting it done!